Scott slumped in the rainbow-colored baby car seat, the seatbelt strap digging at his neck, but he resolved not to make any comment as the road whizzed by outside the tinted wall of Maggie’s car. After his sister had taken such extensive care to get him situated there, delicately fingering the buckle and tucking it down against his chest, he didn’t see the need to repeat the process.

            On his opposite side, across the backseat divider, was Kyle, laid in his own baby seat dug out of the attic half an hour earlier. The teen had yet to speak up either in the middle of his first-ever humiliating baby seat ride post-toddler years. It almost seemed like some sort of rite of passage to Scott, if that half-joke of a concept wasn’t so sad at the same time. Still, there were ways things could be worse right now.

            He was somewhat shocked, really, when Maggie’s initial use of her newfound powers over both of her brothers’ sizes led her to grow each of them back to a full twelve inches. Scott had watched his grinning sibling expand outward all too many times amidst that emerald glow of the shrink ray as she put him down to an inch; to see her actually get comparatively smaller as he regrew was a rare treat.

            Still, they were a little more than massively dwarfed. Maggie happily tucked one brother under each of her armpits like footballs as she skipped through the hallway and back upstairs to get changed for the day and, more importantly, their reserved time at the Adams Clinic R&R training room.

            Scott realized he was going to see the training space for the first time. All these times at the clinic, and Judy had yet to escort him inside. Frankly, it was something Scott felt he’d be perfectly happy going his whole life without seeing. After the previous therapy session, though, when he’d been volunteered as a demonstrator for those translucent shoes and been granted an unfortunate audience as he was squashed into the very matter of his mother’s sole, he figured there couldn’t be much more he was missing.

            Right?

            “We’re aaaalmost there, guys,” Maggie announced, more for Kyle’s information than Scott’s, as the latter of them had taken enough trips there from the house to have the route memorized. “We gotta keep it moving, cuz we only have a couple hours, for Scotty’s out-of-the-house thing, but this is how long you’d have anyway if you were just being signed up for a session at the clinic. So it’s okay.”

            The explanation was delivered with the same pomp and polish as that eerie video instructor Scott had spied on his sister’s tablet several weeks back. It seemed to have done its job on her. Judy would be pleased.

            “Cool,” Kyle muttered, clearly eager to escape the confines of the multicolored safety chair strapped into the upholstery.

            “Somebody not comfy back there?” Maggie giggled.

            “Not really,” Kyle admitted truthfully.

            “We’ll get ya out soon,” she promised. “Don’t get your boxers in a bundle.”

            Scott didn’t let his face reflect it, but always found a way to be surprised at the alien rapport his younger siblings held. Almost normal: a little teasing, not quite content, but normal. Every other statement wasn’t some sick, cryptic joke at the other’s expense. It made some sense, he supposed, that they’d be closer to each other than he’d ever been; he was five years older than Maggie and six more than Kyle, after all. A few years past that and he might’ve even been seen by them more as a weird immature uncle than an actual brother. Scott couldn’t help but wonder how life would’ve been different if he’d been born just a few years later than he was, or vice versa.

            Would he even be sitting here?

            “I hope you boys are all limbered up and stuff,” Maggie said slyly as she turned the wheel, swerving the car into the entrance lane for the Adams Clinic. “Cuz we’re all gonna be putting in work soon.”

            Scott shrugged. What wasn’t work at this size, really?

            Maggie parked, plucked the keys from the ignition, and hopped to Scott’s side door. As when they were preparing to leave, she took her time undoing the latches on the belt. A broad palm flattened down against Scott’s legs, collecting them into her grasp. Her thumbs ebbed and squeezed her brother’s ribcage, only enough that he had to hold his breath to avoid increased pressure, but not enough to inflict pain. It tended to be a different story if his mother had been merciful enough to transport him somewhere at twelve inches in the baby seat, her often-much longer fingernails digging at his skin, and not entirely by accident.

            Releasing the last buckle, Maggie scooped her first doll-sized sibling up and bundled him up against her chest. By nature of being handled with just one palm beneath his rear end, Scott was forcibly embraced into the curve of the girl’s modest but nonetheless omnipresent bust. It, regrettably, wasn’t a location he was new to being held, nor was it one he especially wanted to return to. The warmth of her breast through the fabric of her shirt was just a little too informative.

            Not the least bit self-conscious about gripping Scott in this manner, of course, Maggie clambered halfway into the backseat, bracing herself against her elbow in an effort to reach and undo Kyle’s seat straps. Apparently not content to let go of her first passenger, though, the girl cupped Scott harder up against her abdomen.

            In practical terms for Scott, this meant being cuddled upside-down like a baby koala to its mother’s stomach. The weight of the girl’s chest, even restrained by her sports bra, hung heavier down upon Scott’s body like a pair of oversized gymnasium medicine balls. Her palm, strong and confident beneath his back, squeezed him up ever more firmly for added leverage. The twin pillows of her breasts through the cottony shirt would’ve begun to smother him if he hadn’t managed to burrow his fists up against the strap of her bra for support.

            Cradling Kyle along her other arm now, Maggie backed herself out of the car and laid both brothers in a V-shape, her hands meeting at her stomach. Each boy was cushioned up into her chest, their heads laid back against her firm biceps. Satisfied with her balance, the girl locked up the car and walked across the parking lot toward the Clinic.

            For the briefest instant, most-likely brought on by recent sleep deprivation, Scott was oddly reminded by this particular stance of a mother breastfeeding twin children at the same time. As soon as the image was formulated in his mind, though, he rapidly forced himself to other thoughts to avoid the next logical conclusion. This day was going to be unfortunate enough as it was without his brain playing mean tricks.

            Maggie’s dirty-blonde locks bounced above as she passed into the shade beneath the overhang of the building, then gently elbowed her way inside the foyer, careful not to jostle her brothers too hard. Which was more than Scott could say for Judy, once again.

            Scott looked across the expanse of his sister’s torso to his brother facing him on the opposite arm. Kyle looked more than a little despondent, and no longer with the same sunken-cheeked nausea of the day before after emerging from Judy’s slippers. He just looked about done with the day already.

            By force of will, Scott hoped to silently remind his brother of the very-real alternative he would’ve been facing at this instant. No-doubt stowed in Judy’s high heel while the plane took off, entangled in increasingly steamy nylons for the entire ninety-minute trip to the capital. He smiled at Kyle, though it went unnoticed.

            “All righty, let’s get going,” Maggie said, somewhat needlessly, as she passed by several milling visitors. By a glass door two hallways past, a dark-haired teen of roughly the same age as her sat behind a desk, wearing the usual Clinic business-casual white polo and jeans.

            “Hey, Lyndon,” she sighed. Maggie brandished her brothers, hiking them higher up her arms and squeezing them nearer to each other in a half-hug, half-display mode that also managed to clenched her breasts just that much nearer. Scott could feel the plush weight of one more than ever caving on his back.

            “Hi, Maggie,” the kid said. He nodded at her, clearly noting her street clothes. “Off duty today?”

            “Yep,” Maggie said with something approaching pride. She smiled cheekily.

            Lyndon raised an eyebrow, his gaze falling to her arms. “Uh, Kyle?”

            “Hey, dude,” Kyle muttered. He didn’t look directly at him.

            “Sorry…” the teen coughed as he looked to his desktop computer screen. “Uh, are you… going in there for reserved time?” He pointed at the handle of the glass door which, Scott now realized, was labeled TRAINING CENTER in silver block letters above the frame.

            “Uh-huh,” she confirmed. “My mom should’ve put us down for-”

            “Whoops, sorry. Yeah, I see it now. 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM,” Lyndon said. He dashed something off on the keyboard, then looked to Maggie again and nodded. “You’re all clear. It’s kind of a slow morning, too, so you should have most of the space open for whatever you want.”

            “Cool, awesome. Thaaaanks, Lynd,” Maggie sang in her trademark tone that no-doubt had managed to casually titillate multiple dozens of listeners in her lifetime, if not hundreds. The door to the training center buzzed unlocked and she entered with Kyle and Scott still cuddled to her chest.

            Certainly the room, or more accurately the hangar, of the training center fit with the décor of what Scott had already witnessed. Like the blinding blankness of the group therapy rooms, this space was spare, albeit more utilitarian and decorated for its creepy purpose. Standard exercise machines lined the mirror-plastered wall, all with touch screens attached. Various mats and “accessory” checkpoints dotted the floor, creating clear paths between the training stations. While anyone wandering into the building without context for its uses might’ve mistaken the place as some strangely arranged workout room, the gurgle in Scott’s intestine told him it was so much more, and more frightening, than that.

            To Scott, it was like entering a medieval torture chamber designed by a colorblind modernist. Already he wished it was time to go, but as the clock above the mirror wall indicated, it was actually only 9:56. Plenty of time left to go for whatever this “model B3A2” was.

            Scott supposed he had to count himself lucky that the tiny-tormenting instruction procedures his sister was practicing had such innocuous numbers and letters for names. It might give him more time to stew if they were, for example, named instead “model Tie-A-Tiny-To-Your-Shoe-Laces-And-Run.” Why spoil the surprise?

            Hopefully Kyle was faring better in the anticipatory build-up, though he doubted it.

            Lyndon was right; the place apparently wasn’t popular bright and early on a Saturday morning, which Scott considered lucky. Two other people were already present, but no more to share the wide space. A man wearing earbuds was spraying and wiping down the tools. There was also a woman in the back corner utilizing one of the curling machines for god-knew what purpose; Scott didn’t watch for long enough to develop any theories about how a shrunken individual was involved.

            Sunlight spilled through from skylights, but for the most part, the room was self-contained and private, with the door the only way in besides a fire exit on the opposite wall. A small mercy, really. No audiences, unless those audiences were also present for the same reason.

            “Well, boys,” Maggie sighed. She gazed down at the two shrunken troublemakers in her arms, beaming. Her fingers tightened around their narrow ankles. “Let’s get to work, shall we?”

            She approached the nearest empty work surface, secured safely to the floor. A tray of neatly arrayed accessories laid off to the side of the cleared platform. Scott recognized several sets of the clear marbles he and Kyle had been subjected to beneath their mother and sister’s toes the night before; with the other tools, though, he could mostly just guess about their purposes.

            Maggie set her brothers softly down on a folded towel to the side of the accessory tray. From there, she was able to slump her Clinic duffel bag off her shoulder and set it on the floor. She stooped, briefly dipping down to eye level with her hapless siblings as she rooted through the bag.

            “What the crap is B3A2?” Kyle hissed into Scott’s ear.

            “No idea,” Scott answered genuinely as he watched his sister draw the PMRD out from its case within her bag. A smile was already playing on her lips as she caressed the trigger. “But it’s probably not great.”